This morning the editors of the Washington Post propose their own program to reduce carbon emissions:
WE FAVOR a Green New Deal to save the planet. We believe such a plan can be efficient, effective, focused and achievable.
The Green New Deal proposed by congressional Democrats does not meet that test. Its proponents, led by Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), are right to call for ambition and bold action. They are right that the entire energy sector must be reshaped.
But the goal is so fundamental that policymakers should focus above all else on quickly and efficiently decarbonizing. They should not muddle this aspiration with other social policy, such as creating a federal jobs guarantee, no matter how desirable that policy might be.
And the goal is so monumental that the country cannot afford to waste dollars in its pursuit. If the market can redirect spending most efficiently, money should not be misallocated on vast new government spending or mandates.
On the point of not attempting to accomplish objectives only tangentially related to reducing carbon emissions, something a mentor of mine called “having too many oars in the water”, the editors and I are in complete agreement.
Since this was only the first of what they promise to be a series of editorials there are only hints of their complete plan but I think we should infer measures to ease a short term transition from coal to natural gas accompanied by a carbon tax.
One of the ways of assessing the competing plans is by trying to figure out what would happen if the program were to be completely successful, check the assumptions, and then figure out what is likely to happen.
For example, while the lack of details for the “Green New Deal” proposed by Congressional Democrats makes it hard to assess, I think we can make draw some basic conclusions. So, for example, if it’s completely successful it will
- Sharply reduce carbon emissions in the U. S.
- Reduce global carbon emissions
- Root out the last vestiges of an industrial economy from the U. S.
- Given everyone a good job and
- Fund the program just by issuing credit, something about which its proponents have no concern because they believe that we can issue credit to ourselves indefinitely without risk
What I suspect is more likely is that we would
- Reduce carbon emissions in the U. S. somewhat
- Increase global carbon emissions by transferring industrial production overseas where carbon emissions per unit of production are higher
- Root out the last vestiges of an industrial economy from the U. S.
- Lose enough jobs to render a very high percentage of the American people unemployable
- Fund the program by borrowing and paying interest on that increased debt, thereby increase interest paid on the debt about five fold, making it the highest federal budget item, crowding out other priorities
If the editors of the Washington Post’s plan is completely successful it would
- Reduce U. S. carbon emissions somewhat
- Reduce global carbon emissions slightly
which would be rightly criticized by those who are worried that too much carbon in the atmosphere will render the world uninhabitable as not nearly enough. It’s more likely that it will
- Reduce U. S. carbon emissions nominally and
- Increase global carbon emissions as industry is offshored
A lot depends on your assumptions. If you think that carbon emissions are roughly equal on a per capita basis, the WaPo plan will be more effective than if you believe (as I do) that emissions increase geometrically with income. A lot depends on what you think a carbon tax would actually do. If you think (as I do) that unless adopted worldwide (something for which there is no prospect) and with steep import duties it would offshore industrial production, the carbon tax would be counter-productive.
Also, has anyone recalibrated the effects of the European carbon tax taking into account what we now know about the efficiency of automobile diesel engines or lack thereof? I think the present estimates are based on inputs rather than outputs. We do know that the Europeans offshored a lot of manufacturing to China just as we did.
Here is an article on why solar and wind will never be able to supply enough electric energy. This is a committed environmentalist, and he explains why nuclear is the only solution.
Why Renewables Can’t Save the Planet
The problem with MMTers is that they do not realize that scale matters. By jumping off the high dive board into water, you can earn gold medals, but by jumping off the Golden Gate bridge into water, you can earn a casket.
Thank you for bringing up the point of scale, TB. There is presently little reason to believe that the product of electric vehicles can be scaled to achieve their goals. They obviously have production problems and the main problem seems to be the batteries, the largest cost component. If the yield decreases as you scale up, which seems to be the case, you’ve got a problem.
I obviously do not believe CO2 is a material contributor to any warming. More importantly, all we have really done so far, and what is generally proposed, is to deindustrialize and chase our CO2 emissions over to China, India, etc. And they probably will produce more CO2 per widget than we would. In short, its boneheaded.
But that all said, if as a matter of (dubious) national policy we decide to destroy an industry – the coal industry – do we also have a moral obligation to assist the employees and communities in transitioning in some way? All that will be left is coal for blast furnaces in the steel industry. Note that I differentiate the natural ebbs and flows of industry fortunes from the product of implementation of a national policy reliant on unproven science and political activism.
Returning to the point I made above, the Europeans apparently believe that they have accomplished a lot more with their carbon tax than they actually have. That is an empirical fact, based on what came out in the VW scandal. What they need to determine is what their carbon tax actually accomplished. If most of what it accomplished was, as you put it, to chase CO2 emissions to China it was, indeed, bone-headed.
We need some serious pushback on this “green” agenda. It’s reached the point where serious discussion is off the table, politicians see a “green” embrace as a ticket to office, and we’re all going over the falls in the same barrel if we don’t put the brakes on.
https://apnews.com/379b02190d7d4ce080aba86dcf61258e
Look, CO2 is good for plants, plants are green, green is good. Plant trees if it makes you feel good, but 3/4 of the surface is ocean, and the surface of the ocean has plankton. Plankton loves CO2, and warmth. All good.
It’s a fools errand. No matter what we did, China and India would continue on. Climate change cannot be stopped nor attenuated in any effective way. We should invest our time and money in ameliorating the effects.
The Elephant in the room:
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=26252
Here’s the way I see it. There’s little doubt that the U. S. is adding a lot of CO2 to the atmosphere. There are some things that are in doubt: first, whether the additional CO2 contributes to global warming and, second, over what timeframe. I recognize that there are a lot of reasonably well-informed people who believe with all their hearts that a) it does and b) that will be a problem in the near to medium term if it isn’t already. I think they’re a bit overconfident in their own conclusions but who am I to judge?
I focus my attention on ways and means rather than on endlessly debating the whethers and whens. If we come up with really good ways of addressing those issues without driving our own economy into the ground, we can sell them. Heck, we could give the technology away. It’s better to have a solution when you don’t have a problem than a problem to which you don’t have a solution.
As sam above noted and as Andy’s graph demonstrates, we’re not the real problem at this point. We can have some impact on those countries by changing our own behavior—we can stop importing from them until they put the measures we’ve invented into place.
The political problem here is that the people driving the bus on the Green New Deal aren’t engineers. They’re poets and interest studies majors. They can identify problems but they do not have the knowledge to create the solutions and it may not be possible to convince them to adopt practical real world solutions. I’d rather get in front of them then try to patch up their messes after the fact.
“Root out the last vestiges of an industrial economy from the U. S.”
I haven’t really seen this listed as a goal anywhere in anyone’s version of a Green New Deal. I am not overly worried about about the interest studies majors. They arent going to have a lot of say in things. I also know enough engineers to know that they are going to be absolutely certain that their favored plan will work. They won’t need any actual evidence. I think that we should increase research spending, and not limit ourselves to a single technology. Nuclear is fine, but its just one part of the approach. I wouldn’t spend a whole lot of time trying to force other countries to follow our rules. Those other countries will get hit hard with environmental effects as they grow and will eventually join in.
Steve
steve, that has been an unspoken policy for decades. You don’t have to say something in so many words for it to be a goal. Just look at what’s happened over the last 50 years. Guarneri can speak to this more authoritatively than I. When you regulate heavy industry out of existence, you’ve decided to eliminate an industrial economy. You cannot have an industrial economy on the basis of solar and wind alone. You might be able to heat your home. I doubt if you could charge your EV. Changing over to solar and wind is the equivalent of ending an industrial economy.
We used to lead the world in rare earths production and refining. Now that’s almost completely gone. That isn’t because of petulance or because we ran out. It was regulated out of existence.
It is similar to recycling. Americans want to recycle and do a lot of it, but non-trivial amounts get bundled, put on ships, and sent to the developing world for processing – all for similar reasons. A lot of that “recycling” is never recycled and ends up in foreign landfill and rivers.
“It was regulated out of existence.”
This wasn’t all regulations. Sometimes it really is cheaper to make stuff overseas. Sometimes the businesses in our US industries were so poorly run they were bound to lose out to someone else. Look at our car industry (and they would put a lot of our steel industry in the same boat.
“You cannot have an industrial economy on the basis of solar and wind alone. ”
And you know I have never claimed that. I cite data showing that wind and solar are progressing better than some people want to know, but I dont them (barring some tech breakthrough) being our sole energy sources. Have always favored multiple sources, but I also favor looking at all of the costs, including health effects.
Steve
Yes, sometimes it really is cheaper to make things overseas. When they’re labor intensive or you don’t have the materials or the conditions. But that wasn’t the case with rare earth metals. It was pure NIMBY.
I could cite a half dozen other industries that aren’t labor intensive and which we have plenty of materials and the conditions are right which are now overseas because cost-benefit analysis was not applied to regulations. Canada does that and it’s not exactly a hellhole. There are even some cases in which we ship the raw materials overseas, they’re processed there, and shipped back here for use because regulations prevent our doing the processing here.
“It’s a fools errand”
Yes, and gaining dangerous traction and momentum. It may be too late to save the earth from the warmists by the next election cycle if we don’t act now.
To add on Andy’s point how the US outsourced recycling overseas.
https://www.wired.com/story/since-chinas-ban-recycling-in-the-us-has-gone-up-in-flames/
The Chinese are rich enough they don’t need the money from US “recyclables†– and most US cities are putting blue bins into the landfill as a result.
What does everyone think happened to those recyclables when the went to China?
” It was pure NIMBY.”
I thought that you supported the idea of governmental decisions made at the local level? If individual states/counties decided that rather than have rare earth mining they would rather have tourism, hunting or whatever instead wouldn’t that be their prerogative with your preferred governance?
Per this author, total US spending on Rare earths was about $210 million, so I am not seeing that as a large source of jobs. Also, it doesn’t look like it is so environmentally unfriendly after all with modern techniques. Looks like price is the primary determinant of whether mining is successful with regulations a secondary concern.
https://www.hcn.org/issues/47.11/why-rare-earth-mining-in-the-west-is-a-bust
Steve
“I haven’t really seen this listed as a goal anywhere in anyone’s version of a Green New Deal.â€
And crooks don’t post their intention to rob your house in newspapers. C’mon steve, the Green New Deal is so rediculous it would totally gut the economy. It’s high school freshman policy. And as for rare earths, those are very strategic materials. And now the good and pure intentioned Chinese control supply. You are floundering here.
I don’t know how authoritatively I speak; it’s common sense. Refining operations (driving chemical reactions) requires enormous amounts of energy. But it goes way beyond those industries. Manufacturing in general is energy intensive. Heating and slamming plastic resins into dies takes a lot of electricity. So does bending and shaping metal, or welding it. I haven’t seen too many windmill driven rolling mills. And how about just moving things around. Heavy things. Do you know how much energy it takes to lift a 767 off the ground? It goes on and on. AOC, Kamala Harris et al have probably never been in a factory. They are completely ignorant. AOC is just dumb. But Kamala Harris knows better. It’s just pure politics.
In the real world issues are rarely monovariate. Steve is correct that some industry left separate and apart from regulation. But don’t for a second think the GND wouldn’t be a total disaster. So much so it hasn’t a chance. The only issue is how much damage can be done as an offshoot until AOC can return to bartending. Look at what immigration has done to wage structures. And meanwhile – Andy’s graphic has been floating about for awhile – we commit economic suicide while the Chinese and Indians spew CO2 to their hearts content.
Everyone will have health care and it will be better and cheaper. It will be easy….We will build the wall and Mexico will pay for it.
Sound familiar? Didn’t happen did it? OAC’s GND won’t happen either. It is a wish list. I am sure Trump’s true believers thought these and his other campaign promises would happen. We have several of those people here. (Not sure about Drew.) I am sure that there are a very few on the left who really believe the wish list is possible. Most of us dont.
” And as for rare earths, those are very strategic materials. And now the good and pure intentioned Chinese control supply. You are floundering here.”
No, I am actually citing the article above. The Chinese dont really control the markets. No one has shortages. Prices are low. The Chinese set quotas, drove prices and tried to control the markets. It failed badly.
So, why did Murkowski and some other Senators claim that China controlled the markets and they were in critical supply? They were trying to get, you will never believe this, government subsidies for the mining interests they support, meaning the ones that contribute to their campaigns. As someone who claims to oppose this kind fo behavior, I would expect you to think this is a bad idea. Maybe it is OK because Republicans are doing it?
Steve
steve, I’m trying to reconcile what I know to be true with what you and your article are saying. China produces about 100,000 MT per year. That’s around three times what the rest of the world combined produces. That alone is effective control. We’ve nearly ceased production not because we don’t have rare earths or because of labor costs but due to environmental regulations that raise the cost of production here.
The article cites China as consuming 75% but that’s misleading. We’re the end user.
Rare earth metals are intermediate goods not final production. Said another way how much we import in raw or even processed form is irrelevant. They’re used in thousands of products that we (and the Chinese) manufacture in typically extremely small quantities. An example is that neither wind turbines nor solar cells can be produced without rare earth metals.
That we are not producing more of what we consume is a grave strategic error. It’s a supply chain issue.
“We’ve nearly ceased production not because we don’t have rare earths or because of labor costs but due to environmental regulations that raise the cost of production here.”
Not really what the people interviewed here claim. Also note that, so they claim, with modern methods the mining is not especially harmful to the environment anyway. They re-opened our one big mine when the rare earths sold for a lot. Prices came down and the company went bankrupt. (Actually, I am not seeing anyone present any real data on the costs of regulations, so the best we have is the word of the guy being interviewed.)
” That’s around three times what the rest of the world combined produces. That alone is effective control. ”
Except that the stuff is easy to mine and there are lots of places that have them. When the Chinese tried to bump prices by setting quotas they got creamed. So the Chinese have no ability to control prices. They already failed at that. What other kind of control are you talking about?
Steve
The primary environmental problem isn’t the mining. It’s the processing.